“It was all my fault,” she said. And then with a frankness that surprised her she added: “I had deceived him about something and he caught me at it. He gave me a big blowing-up, and I deserved it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that; but, of course, playing the game straight was always a big card with him. I guess Cecil will smooth him down.”
She was surprised to find herself talking to him so freely; his eagerness to take her mind away from the unpleasant episode with Farley gave her a comforting sense of his native kindliness. Her heart warmed with liking for him as she reappraised his good looks, his well-scrubbed appearance of a boy turned out for his first party by a doting mother; his general air of wholesomeness and good humor. He had known hard knocks, she did not question, but the bruises were well hidden. With all his slanginess and volubility there was a certain high-mindedness about him to which, in her hunger for sympathy, she gave fullest value.
He was afraid of her further confidences; afraid that she would disclose something she would regret later, and this he foresaw might embarrass their subsequent relations. She had been humiliated by Farley’s abuse, and it was not fair, he argued, to take advantage of her present state of mind by allowing her to tell more of the trouble. But he was not able at once to change the current of her thoughts.
“You know,” she said, sitting up straight and folding her hands on her knees, “I’ve been thinking a lot of things since I saw you out there by the river—about old times, and wondering whether it was good or bad luck that took me away from Belleville and brought me up here. I’d have been better off if I’d stayed there. I’d probably have been washing dishes in the Belleville hotel if the Farleys hadn’t picked me up, a dirty little beggar, and tried to make something decent out of me! I’m saying that to you because you know all about me. You’ve made your own way, and you’re a lot happier than I am, and you’re not under obligations to anybody; and here I am trying to climb a ladder my feet weren’t made for!”
“Cut all that out!” he expostulated. “Just because Uncle Tim’s been a little fretful, you needn’t think everything’s gone to the bow-wows. And as for staying in Belleville, why, the thought of it gives me shivers! There ain’t any use talking about that.”
Her face expressed relief at the vigor with which he sprang to her defense, and he plunged ahead.
“Say, speaking of dining-room girls, there was a girl at that Belleville hotel that was some girl for sure. She was fruit to the passing eye, and a mutt carrying samples for a confectionery house called her Gladys one day, her real name being Sarah, and asked her how she’d like going to the movies with him after she got the dishes washed; and she landed one order of poached cold-storage eggs on his bosom the neatest you ever saw. Some men never learn how to size up character, and any fool could ’a’ told that that girl wasn’t open to a jolly from a sweet-goods peddler who’d never passed that way before. Sarah’s mother owns the hotel, and Sarah only helps in the dining-room Saturday nights to let the regular crockery-smasher off to punch the ivories for the Methodist choir practice. I was sitting next that chap and he thought he’d show me what a winner he was. I’m not justifying Sarah’s conduct, and about a half-portion of the golden side of that order caught me on the ear. I merely mention it to show you that you had better not think much of the life of the dining-room girl, which ain’t all the handbills make out.”
“I hope,” remarked Nan, “that she didn’t break the plate!”
“No more,” he came back promptly, “than you could break a ten-dollar bill at a charity fair. That’s another thing I learned from Cecil. He got me to take a stroll with him through a charity bazaar last winter—just to protect him from the snares of the huntress, he said. He started in with ten tens and had to borrow five I was hiding from my creditors before we got back to the door. And all we carried out of the place was a pink party-bag Cecil handed a tramp we found freezing to death outside and hoping a little charity would ooze through the windows.”